Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Search

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

120 results

Page 1 of 6

Journal of Medieval Military History XXI
  • Edited by Kelly DeVries, Clifford J. Rogers, John France
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    10 January 2024
    Print publication:
    06 June 2023
  • The twenty-first volume of the Journal of Medieval Military History begins with three studies examining aspects of warfare in the Latin East: an archaeological report on the defenses of Jerusalem by Shimon Gibson and Rafael Y. Lewis; a study of how military victories and defeats (viewed through the lens of carefully shaped reporting) affected the reputation, and the flow of funds and recruits to, the Military Orders, by Nicolas Morton; and an exploration of how the Kingdom of Jerusalem quickly recovered its military strength after the disaster of Hattin by Stephen Donnachie. Turning to the other side of the Mediterranean, Donald J. Kagay analyzes how Jaime I of Aragon worked to control violence within his realms by limiting both castle construction and the use of mechanical artillery. Guilhem Pépin also addresses the limitation of violence, using new documents to show that the Black Prince's sack of Limoges in 1370 was not the unrestrained bloodbath described by Froissart. The remaining three contributions deal with aspects of open battle. Michael John Harbinson offers a large-scale study of when and why late-medieval men-at-arms chose to dismount and fight on foot instead of acting tactically as cavalry. Laurence W. Marvin reconsiders the Battle of Bouvines, concluding that it was far from being a ritualized mass duel. Finally, Michael Livingston elucidates some principles for understanding medieval battles in general, and the battle of Agincourt in particular.

Journal of Medieval Military History
  • Edited by Kelly DeVries, Clifford J. Rogers, John France
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    07 October 2022
    Print publication:
    17 June 2022
  • The essays in this volume of the Journal continue its proud tradition of presenting cutting-edge research with a wide chronological and geographical, range, from eleventh-century Georgia (David IV's use of the methods described in De velitatione bellica) to fifteenth-century England and France (a detailed analysis of the use of the under-appreciated lancegay and similar weapons). Iberia and the Empire are also addressed, with a study of Aragonese leaders in the War of the Two Pedros, a discussion of Prince Ferdinand's battle-seeking strategy prior to the battle of Toro in 1476, and an analysis and transcription of a newly-discovered Habsburg battle plan of the early sixteenth century, drawn up for the war against Venice. The volume also embraces different approaches, from cultural-intellectual history (the afterlife of the medieval Christian Warrior), to experimental archaeology (the mechanics of raising trebuchets), to comparison of 'the face of battle' in a medieval illuminated manuscript with its depiction in modern films, to archivally-based administrative history (recruitment among the sub-gentry for Edward I's armies).

  • 6 - The Earliest European Recipes for “Powder for Guns” (1336 and 1338–c. 1350)

  • Edited by John France, Kelly DeVries, Clifford J. Rogers
  • Book:
    Journal of Medieval Military History
    Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    02 June 2021
    Print publication:
    17 May 2021, pp 119-126

  • Summary

    Only a few fourteenth-century recipes for gunpowder proper (for use in shooting projectiles from guns) are known. They can be difficult to interpret, partly because their rarity hinders comparisons between texts in order to clarify ambiguous directions. This article presents and discusses the earliest known recipe, from Friuli and dated 1336, in comparison to what was previously the earliest widely-known formulation: the Augsburg recipe of 1338–c. 1350. The German text (translated into English here for the first time) provides context for the Italian recipe, and the latter, in turn, in combination with laboratory testing, settles a disputed reading of the German formula.

    In two articles in the previous volume of this journal, Clifford J. Rogers and Trevor Russell Smith offered new transcriptions and translations of several nearly unknown gunpowder recipes from the last hundred years of the Middle Ages. Rogers noted that there were very few complete recipes for gunpowder proper (that is, for mixtures specifically intended to propel projectiles from guns) that could be reliably dated to the first fifty years of the history of cannon in Europe (1326–1375). In fact, since the recipes in the Munich copy of the Büchsenmeisterbuch (MS. Cgm 600) probably date to around 1400 (rather than c. 1350, as once thought), and since the French “recipes” of c. 1338, 1345, and 1350 are actually purchase records rather than instructions for manufacture, and moreover do not specify the proportion of charcoal to be used,3 that left only one such recipe known to scholars of early artillery: one from Augsburg, composed not long after 1337. That one recipe, moreover, is sufficiently ambiguous that different scholars have read it in two different ways, leaving the earliest history of cannon-powder very unclear. It is now possible to expand the roster from one to two, adding an even earlier formulation: one written down in northern Italy in 1336. Comparison to this earlier recipe, in combination with laboratory testing, makes clear which reading of the German recipe is correct. The combination of the two recipes, correctly interpreted, gives us a good picture of the earliest cannon-powders, which were by modern standards low in saltpeter and high in sulfur.

Journal of Medieval Military History

Journal of Medieval Military History
  • Volume XVIII
  • Volume 18
  • Edited by John France, Kelly DeVries, Clifford J. Rogers
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    06 October 2020
    Print publication:
    19 June 2020
  • "The Journal of Medieval Military History continues to consolidate its now assured position as the leading academic vehicle for scholarly publication in the field of medieval warfare."Medieval Warfare

Page 1 of 6